Smart lighting systems (such as smart bulbs) need to monitor incoming signals even when they are in standby mode (emitting no light). This is necessary to respond to instructions such as turn-on, change intensity, change color, etc. A variety of protocols can be used to communicate with smart lamps—either wireless (Wife, Bluetooth . . . ) or wired (PLC . . . ). Typically, a communication chipset requires electrical power to monitor incoming signals, which leads to power consumption in standby mode. For modern communication protocols, this consumption can be on the order of 0.5 W, 1 W or more—an undesirably high value. Other, more basic, communication protocols can achieve a lower consumption (e.g. 0.1 W or lower) but only offer basic/low-throughput communication capabilities.
What is needed is a smart lighting system which can maintain a very low standby consumption while retaining a modern communication protocol. The present invention fulfils this need among others.